The Comedy of Christmas ~ The Imaginative Conservative

The enjoyment of Bethlehem factors by means of purgatorial sorrow to the glory of paradise. Because of this the Comedy of Christmas brings laughter, even on this vale of tears and its veil of fears.

This previous semester at Aquinas Faculty in Nashville, I’ve had the enjoyment of instructing an entire course on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Just a few weeks in the past we had been discussing the ethical dilemma confronted by Frodo and Sam when, on separate events, to be able to keep away from the accursed Ring being captured by the Enemy, they select to place it on, a factor to be prevented at (nearly) all prices. I inform my college students that this selection presents us with an ethical dilemma as a result of it appears that evidently the hobbits are placing on the Ring (an evil act) to stop the Ring from being taken by the Enemy (an evil consequence that can observe if the evil act isn’t dedicated). What, I requested my college students, ought to we do if we discover ourselves going through a selection between two evils? In reply, certainly one of my college students quipped that Individuals face such a selection each 4 years. The category laughed heartily, as did I.

It was a witty remark, to make sure, however why, I ponder, did all of us discover such a tragic reality about our current pseudo-democracy so humorous? Why is it hilarious that we’re offered with a conjurer’s trick each election enabling us to decide on, as soon as the preliminary circus and shenanigans are over, between Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber? Shouldn’t we be crying, relatively than laughing, at such a pathetic state of affairs? The reply to such a query is to be discovered within the presence of irony, particularly within the ironic distance that exists between the excessive very best of democracy to which all of us in concept subscribe and its absolute absence within the type of it we truly expertise.

The pleasant paradox is that comedy typically expresses and exposes a tragedy, exorcising its evil from our hearts and thereby sanctifying the very tragedy itself by means of the presence of the ironic comedy. We giggle on the evil we see and thereby by some means conquer it.

Surprisingly maybe, there’s something of the spirit of Christmas on this paradox. The enjoyment and laughter on the delivery of the Child is all of the extra pleasant as a result of it delivers us from evil. The innocence makes us giggle as a result of it delivers us from guilt. The babe taken up within the arms of His Mom brings us pleasure as a result of He takes up arms in opposition to the Satan. The smallness of the Youngster delights us as a result of his smallness defeats the greatness of the World. The enjoyment and laughter assist us make sense of the struggling and tears. The levitas lightens and enlightens the gravitas. It was, as an example, not merely for laughs that Chesterton tells us that angels can fly as a result of they take themselves evenly whereas the Satan fell due to the drive of his personal gravity. With this spark of epigrammatic brilliance, Chesterton makes the essential connection between humour and humility. Angels and saints can giggle on the Satan, whereas the Satan can solely vent his fury on the angels and saints. The Satan takes himself too severely to get the joke.

We’ve laugher in our hearts and pleasure in our souls at Christmastime as a result of the Divine Comedy is sensible of the Infernal Tragedy and is its antidote, dispelling the poison of satisfaction with the humour of humility. It’s all too good not to be true! Or, as Chesterton says, we don’t dwell in one of the best of all attainable worlds however in one of the best of all inconceivable worlds.

If that is so, why are we not strolling round with a everlasting smile on our faces? Why will we spend a lot of our time bemoaning our lot in life and bewailing the state of the world? Why will we ignore the candle and see solely the darkness surrounding it? Why doesn’t the enjoyment of Christmas and the laughter on the lips of the Christ Youngster and the delight within the coronary heart of His Mom maintain us in a state of perpetual contentment?

The reply is that Christmas isn’t sufficient. Beginning isn’t sufficient. Being beloved, as a child is beloved, isn’t sufficient. The Child isn’t merely born to dwell. He’s additionally born to die. Enshrined and enshrouded in his nativity is His mortality. The Comedy of delivery factors to the tragedy of loss of life. To dwell is to die as a result of to like is to die, the latter being a dying to self for the nice of the opposite. And but, and right here’s one other pleasant paradox, the refusal to like is a refusal to dwell. Dwelling and loving are synonymous. Due to this fact, paradoxically, dwelling and dying are mystically synonymous. Bethlehem factors to Golgotha. The Manger factors to the Cross.

As we had no selection about being born, so we’ve got no selection about having to die. Like Frodo and Sam, we face a selection between two evils. They’re the 2 evils which might be positioned both aspect of the Cross of Christ. They’re the evil cross of loss of life on which the nice thief hangs, and the evil cross of loss of life on which the unhealthy thief hangs. Dismas or despair? We’ve no selection however to bear our crosses, as Frodo and Sam had no actual selection however to bear the Ring. We should bear them on the through dolorosa, which is our life’s journey, to our personal specific Mount Doom or Golgotha, which is our personal specific loss of life at journey’s finish.

It’s true that to decide on to bear the Ring, or the Cross, is to decide on struggling, however the paradox is that the hobbits wouldn’t have escaped from struggling if they’d forged the Ring away. Its energy would nonetheless be on them. Equally, if we select to forged of the yoke of our personal crosses, these given to us, we are going to solely substitute them with heavier and worse crosses, these we give to ourselves.

The enjoyment of Bethlehem factors by means of purgatorial sorrow to the glory of paradise. Because of this the Comedy of Christmas brings laughter, even on this vale of tears and its veil of fears. It sees the life in loss of life, the life after loss of life, and, pleasure of joys, the Life, born in Bethlehem, that places an finish to Dying within the Love-Lifetime of the Resurrection. Could the Babe of Bethlehem be praised within the Title and Glory of the Resurrected Christ!

This essay was first revealed right here in December 2015.

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The featured picture is “Previous Father Christmas” by William Ewart Lockhart (1846-1900), and is within the public area, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.